For the most part, Taste of Cinema’s 2020 movie coverage has come to a close but, as with previous years, we fell head over heels for a number of films that seemed to get short shrift on other movie sites or, largely owing to the pandemic, didn’t get the propers that they so richly deserved.

And so, presented here in our easy to digest list form, are 20 films from 2020 that we feel were given to short a shelf life and really deserve a second look. Some genre fare will be found below, as well as a few festival faves that have yet to garner a wider release, as well as some foreign language films that hit the sweet spot, and more than a few films that seemed to go straight to streaming services where they were lost in the shuffle.

Enjoy, and please feel free to join the discussion and/or add some of your favorite overlooked films from last year in the comments section below (and be nice!). Thanks for reading!

20. Jumbo

Following her string of award-winning short films, Belgium-born writer-director Zoé Wittock makes the leap to feature length fare with Jumbo, a strange love story that pretty much guarantees future cult adoration, and we’re here for every oddball moment of it.

Noémie Merlant (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) is Jeanne Tantois, a socially awkward woman who works a go nowhere gig at an amusement park and finds herself falling head over heels in love with Jumbo, the new tilt-a-whirl ride. Yes, you read that right, Jeanne has the hots for a hydraulic-powered, flashy light festooned midway ride.

Their love story, something like “girl meets ride, ride meets girl”, in Merlant’s oddly capable hands, promises star-crossed courtship, surreal sexiness, and more. Admittedly it does sound a little like a cross between David Cronenberg’s Crash crossed with something spicy from Quentin Dupieux and an added dash of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Either way, Wittock’s debut is wholly original, entirely out to lunch, and easy on the eyes.

19. Come to Daddy

While it’s hard to deny that much of what works with Ant Timpson’s very violent and very fun B-movie thriller utterly evaporates by the final reel, Come to Daddy is still an enthusiastic and effective ride with the top down and the wind blasting you full on in the face.

Elijah Wood is a sheer delight as entitled man-child Norval Greenwood, out to reconnect, if he can, with his estranged father (Stephen McHattie) at his remote cabin off the bucolic coast of the Pacific Northwest. It’s not long before things escalate in upsetting ways and weirdos start to dogpile at Norval’s doorstep (brilliant character actors like Martin Donovan and Michael Smiley make memorable appearances).

Come to Daddy has so much vicious violence and caustic wit that these elements make up for some sadly overdone banalities with the rather flimsy plot, making for a horror comedy that tries very hard to be likeable, and though it may not be as clever as it sets out to be, it has a warped warmth and eagerness that’s hard to resist.

18. Vivarium

Perhaps the less said about the Twilight Zone-ish plot behind Irish director Lorcan Finnegan’s mystery-shrouded Vivarium, the better. Let’s just say that young couple Gemma (Imogen Poots) and Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) get much more than they bargained for when they, on a whim, take advice from bizarro real estate agent Martin (Jonathan Aris) and drive out to the suburban development called Loom for a look-see.

Nightmares of marriage, parenthood, and complacency loom on Loom’s serpentine horizon, but so does much more. Finnegan and writer Garret Shanley maintain a relentless and cruel clip as this sci-fi horror film pulls willing viewers down the rabbit hole. Home sweet home this most assuredly is not!

17. Becky

Like the bastard lovechild of Green Room and Degrassi High, directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion have made some seriously exuberant genre fare that will have you pumping your fist for much of its fast moving 98 minutes.

Intense and terribly entertaining, Lulu Wilson is wicked in the titular role as the angsty young rebel who soon runs afoul some extremely cruel escaped convicts led by an effectively against-type Kevin James.

Bonus points for how therapeutic this film is when you get to watch white supremacist dirtbags get their asses handed to them so fucking hard. If Becky gets a sequel we’ll be first in line.

16. Undine

A new film from German auteur Christian Petzold (Phoenix, Transit) is always cause for celebration, that it’s a magical-reality infused modern day fairy tale ups the ante even more, and to win the entire kitty it just so happens that Petzold’s most recent muse, Undine’s star attraction, Paula Beer, is already winning raves (including Best Actress at Berlinale 2020). Not to be outdone, the other heavy-lifter in the acting department in this one is Germany’s answer to Joaquin Phoenix himself, Franz Rogowski.

Undine (Beer) is a historian living in Berlin where she lectures on the urban development going on there, and it’s in the lecture hall where her recovering romantic failings may be in for an uptick after she meets Christoph (Rogowski). An ancient myth enfolds Undine and her latest lover, and while ambiguities unfold, so too does dizzying romance, underwater revelry and a lot more in this fantastical diversion from a great filmmaker.

15. Black Bear

The deceptively simple premise of a tense weekend in the woods with a small group of headstrong but emphatic characters gets mined for all its worth in this chamber piece from Lawrence Michael Levine (Wild Canaries), and the results are paradoxically satisfying and inconclusive in Black Bear, a film that plays out like a mumblecore Mulholland Drive or a Noah Baumbach variation on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

The best reason to wrestle with Black Bear is to see and appreciate the three leads who each take a turn in the spotlight, though it’s largely Aubrey Plaza’s showpiece, easily stealing any and all thunder that co-stars Chris Abbott and Sarah Gadon can muster.

A fine indie drama full of quick quips, uncomfortable laughs and meta-musings, this may be an acquired taste but it’s worth the while.

14. Daniel Isn’t Real

Luke (Miles Robbins) is a troubled man who survives a horrific family trauma that resuscitates Daniel (Patrick Schwarzenegger, son of Arnold), his imaginary friend from childhood to help him deal. But Drop Dead Fred this most certainly is not.

Based on Brian DeLeeuw’s 2009 novel “In This Way I was Saved”, director Adam Egypt Mortimer (who also adapted the book along with DeLeeuw) has crafted a supernatural suspense thriller that keeps viewers enthralled, off-balance, and fully engaged. Is Luke suffering from mental illness or something truly demonic?

The film may be low-budget, but there’s nothing on screen that would suggest that, and Mortimer, who must be a Clive Barker fan, also scores points for casting so many promising and personable young stars. Sasha Lane (American Honey, Hellboy) and Hannah Marks (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency) are standouts in this creepy and catchy little number.

13. Horse Girl

Director Jeff Baena (who also co-wrote along with star Alison Brie) has crafted a very effective fantasy/psychodrama with Horse Girl, and don’t let that fact that it’s billed as a “Netflix Original” turn you off. I mean, let’s face it, the world’s most popular streaming service is pretty inconsistent in the quality control department, but here the stars definitely align. Brie is excellent as the eponymous Horse Girl, actually named Sarah, and her story, while strange and unsettling, is very engaging as it moves from light comedy to something much darker.

As a sympathetic examination of severe mental illness (or is it?), Horse Girl gets very squirmy, and it should, but for SF heads there’s also a definite Philip K Dick influence that grabs hold of you, if you let it. In fact, Sarah’s love of all things equine, spelled out in the film’s very title, is an allusion PKD fans might connect to his best-selling VALIS trilogy which combines similar gnostic visions of alien abduction as religious experience endured by one Horselover Fat, Dick’s alter-personality.

The enigmatic aspects of the film might infuriate some viewers, there’s a lot going on here for the patient amongst us, but Brie’s by turns comical, fragile, frightening and tough performance carries us through any narrative lapses. This genre-jumping mindtrip is confusing and fun, and you can unpack it for days afterwards. So saddle up, this ride is quite an amble.

12. The Bloodhound

Unsettling and strange, the Bloodhound is a cerebral chamber piece that riffs on Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” while slyly entertaining and provoking a patient audience in writer-director Patrick Picard’s ferocious feature debut.

Francis (Liam Aiken) visits his one time very close pal, Jean Paul Luret (Joe Adler) in his luxurious but forbidding mid-century home, after an alarming but aloof plea for help. What unfolds involves JP’s tormented twin sister Vivian (Annalise Basso), a crawling apparition, and more over the film’s scant but effectively utilized 72 minutes.

Picard composes many lovely and unnerving visuals compositions (cinematographer Jake Magee is also one to keep an eye on), with a highly effective production design from Arielle Ness-Cohn, suggesting that this eerie introduction is one full of promise and menace.

11. Selah and the Spades

An intriguing and visually rich coming-of-age tale from writer-directorTayarisha Poe, Selah and the Spades also functions as a highly stylized film noir crime film in a high school setting (films like Brick and Heather are obvious influences here). In the titular role, Lovie Simone is a force of nature as Selah Summers, a beautiful, motivated, power-obsessed matron who sells drugs to her fellow classmates at the prestigious Pennsylvania boarding school where she rules with a velvet glove.

When the new girl on the block, Paloma Davis (Celeste O’Connor), transfers to Selah’s school, a struggle for power will soon develop and while some threads of the ensuing story start to get a little frayed and messy, Selah and the Spades shines in its own offbeat, visually full, and slickly imparted way. We can expect great things from Poe, and this dressy debut makes for a more than apt, and entirely expressive calling card.

Without a doubt 2020 was a particularly strong and stunning year for film, despite the stresses and strain put on the industry (and us all). With so many awe-inspiring visuals lighting up our living rooms, and drive-ins, (here’s hoping movie theaters and multiplexes safely return to us once we get a handle on the pandemic), Taste of Cinema continues our exciting and tireless search for the most visually exquisite films of 2020.

As ever, such a task was no easy charge, and not one we undertook lightly, although several films stood out straight away––the extraordinary visual canvasses of David Fincher’s Mank, Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock and Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland all lead the charge––the assembled list presented here offers up the finest films of dazzling depth, stirring symmetry, gorgeous framing, exquisite compositions, and assured grace that 2020 had to offer. Enjoy!

20. Into the Storm

Beautifully shot and truly touching, this Peruvian surfing documentary from Adam Brown was filmed over 5 years and coincidentally it made me ugly cry about 5 times.

Ostensibly the story of Jhonny Guerrero, who is 14 when we first meet him, an indigenous surfer from the drug-addled and gang-plagued streets of Chorrillos, Lima. Into the Storm and the subjects that are front and center are never less than compelling, it’s largely a tale of class struggle but there’s so much more, and their ordeals are emotionally rich, combined with the stunning vistas, and big-hearted humanity on bold display, it’s one of the most fascinating, fine, and graceful documentaries to kiss the shore in some time.

19. Siberia

The prolific and provocative filmmaker Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant) once again reteams with his current mainstay and ready muse Willem Dafoe in Siberia, a surreal digression that feels like a subarctic delineation of James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” and is also perhaps just as polarizing.

As Ferrara’s allegorical and byzantine-like film unfolds, it becomes the kind of deep dive where it’s very easy to lose track of all the narrative threads and that may well be part of it’s elaborate duplicity. Dafoe’s many doppelgängers, brushes with sorcerers, lactating women and naked dwarves all depose such fascinations.

Is it pretentious? Absolutely, but don’t let that dampen the enjoyment of splashing around in these strangely surreal waters with the consistently wonderful Dafoe and the odd assortment of dreamlike no-goodniks, alluring sirens and dangerous visions that suck him and us into the sly abyss. It’s a dark deathtrip and some kind of vivid and sequential cinematic coup d’etat.

18. Gretel and Hansel

Across two very startling, deeply atmospheric and lyrical horror films, director Oz Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House) has explored dynamic and disturbing aspects of pain, sorrow, and female agency, and now with what may be his finest yet, he shrewdly revises a classic fairy tale.

Gretel and Hansel opens in an arcadian countryside besieged by plague and ruinous superstition; Sophia Lillis (It, I Am Not Okay With This) is Gretel, who along with her young brother Hansel (Sam Leakey) are forsaken by their mother (Fiona O’Shaughnessy) after refusing to join a convent, and set forth to tame the dark wilderness. Facing starvation the pair stumble upon the sweet-smelling home of a witch (Alice Krige) and here so many more troubles begin.

In Perkins’s capable hands the familiar shadows of Gretel and Hansel transmute into a twisted and thorny tale of feminine force and freedom and the terrible price of both these treasures. Aided by DP Galo Olivares and production designer Jeremy Reed, Perkins inundates the viewer with evil imagery and symbols, creating a creepy climate both strange and chimeric, conjuring a powerful magical spell impossible to break and a visual feast that will more than fill you up.

17. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

He may not be as prolific as his fans would like, but writer-director Charlie Kaufman came back in 2020 in a big way, offering us another intensely surreal and densely layered film that promises, at least initially, to plumb the depths of the subconscious à la vintage David Lynch and then some. And despite some very Lynchian manoeuvres throughout, a single viewing doesn’t quite coalesce (I’m Thinking of Ending Things can be something of a hard sell as multiple viewings appear to be mandatory, if you want to make sense of it all).

Admittedly I didn’t connect emotionally the way that I had hoped with this alternately dazzling and confounding film, but it still held me rapt throughout. Still, while this film lacks the mastery of Synecdoche, New York, it’s still a memorable, moving and worthwhile film with much to admire and marvel at (Jessie Buckley, Toni Colette, Jesse Plemons and David Thewlis are fantastic).

Apart from some seemingly deliberate obfuscation, this film is still highly recommended and, off-kilter as it is, is frequently a beauty to behold.

16. Last and First Men

Perhaps best known for his incredibly moving minimalist score for Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016), amongst others, Icelandic composer and filmmaker Jóhan Jóhannsson’s Last and First Men, released posthumously, makes for one haunting, honey of a post-apocalyptic parting gift.

Beautiful black-and-white imagery, filmed in stunning 16mm by cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen (Victoria), combined with fittingly chilly narration from Tilda Swinton, evoke the final gasps of a lost utopia in an entirely immersive and cerebral essay film. It’s a somber yet intricate sci-fi spectacle that lands somewhere between Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962) and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) — in fact, Arthur C. Clarke read Stapleton’s novel at a very impressionable age, inspiring not only his short story “The Sentinel” but the monoliths therein that would become the most iconic imagery in Kubrick’s adaptation and overall oeuvre.

This is a dreamy and dazzling final statement on ephemerality and extinction from a remarkable polymath artist we were only just getting to know.

15. Undine

A new film from German auteur Christian Petzold (Phoenix, Transit) is always cause for celebration, that it’s a magical-reality infused modern day fairy tale ups the ante even more, and to win the entire kitty it just so happens that Petzold’s most recent muse, Undine’s star attraction Paula Beer is already winning raves (including Best Actress at Berlinale 2020). Not to be outdone, the other really heavy-lifter in the acting department in this one is Germany’s answer to Joaquin Phoenix himself, Franz Rogowski.

Undine (Beer) is a historian living in Berlin where she lectures on the urban development going on there, and it’s in the lecture hall where her recovering romantic failings may be in for an uptick after she meets Christoph (Rogowski). An ancient myth enfolds Undine and her latest lover, and while ambiguities unfold, so too does dizzying romance, underwater revelry and a lot more in this fantastical diversion from a great filmmaker.

14. She Dies Tomorrow

Alternately jarring and subdued, writer-director Amy Seimetz (Sun Don’t Shine) weaves a nuanced tale of haunting, emotional anguish in her latest film, She Dies Tomorrow. To watch this movie today, in the midst of the pandemic — and particularly if you’ve ever read Ray Bradbury’s 1951 short story “The Last Night of the World”, which must have been at least a thematic influence — makes the dread and fatalist certainty of Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) all the more palpable and distressing.

Seimetz’s film is instantly identifiable as part of society’s present ambience of uncertainty, insanity and existential panic owing to civil and mental turmoil. But this rattling unrest is showcased in stunning colors and production design, make no mistake, this is an arthouse picture with a poetic presentation of mental illness that often feels experimental and more than a little precarious (mad props to DP Jay Keitel, production designer Ariel Vida, editor Kate Brokaw, and the score from the Mondo Boys).

In Seimetz’s psychodrama a circle of friends quickly come to recognize that Amy’s odd surety that death is quickly approaching becomes something every bit as infectious as the novel coronavirus. The apprehension, anxiety and paranoia these characters stare down becomes a frighteningly believable contagion, and yet the black humor throughout prevents this vivid trip from being anything like a somber elegy.

13. My Octopus Teacher

Gorgeously photographed and unexpectedly moving, this remarkable and graceful tale of friendship between man and octopus amidst a dizzying and dream-like kelp forest in South Africa isn’t just one of the best and most beautiful documentaries of 2020, it’s also the most astonishing tearjerkers of the year as well.

Directors Philippa Ehrlich and James Reed, along with the good-natured diver/filmmaker subject Craig Foster take the viewer into a little seen and even lesser understood undersea world occupied by a young octopus, who, like the title suggests, has much to teach for the curious and compassionate. As Reed and the octopus develop an unbelievably close bond, so too will the audience’s perceptions change and be enriched by this fascinating, graceful, and gripping tale that is simultaneously heartbreaking, healing, and ultimately enlivening. You’ve seen nothing like it. Don’t miss it.

12. Shirley

Traditional biopics are often overrun with tedious tropes and predictable plotting, and much to the credit of director Josephine Decker (Madeline’s Madeline), there’s nothing traditional about the entirely fictional Shirley. Eschewing the dull trappings of the genre at almost every turn, Decker offers up a steady stream of dreamlike incidents and imagery familiar to the Shirley Jackson milieu, that makes it a visually dense and rather muscular feat of storytelling strength and epicurean strangeness.

Elizabeth Moss, who is in imminent danger of overexposure, is great in the eponymous role of the famous horror writer, and Michael Stuhlbarg shines as her forlorn husband, and as their wedded bliss unravels, their journey becomes all the more surreal as the certainty of it all becomes far less tangible. As tensions rise, a delirious perspective holds sway, and while Moss’s other big genre film from 2020, The Invisible Man, might hog most of the plaudits, Shirley is the serenely sinister chamber piece that offers intellectual stimulation and opulent eye candy that will truly persist and plague the viewer for days afterwards.

11. Possessor

Brandon Cronenberg’s extreme genre thriller Possessor runs amok with futuristic technologies melding with a worn, vintage esthetic that make it a beautifully brutal sci-fi headtrip. Contract killer Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough), a corporate agent working under Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh), uses state-of-the-art brain-implant tech to assassinate her targets. A murderer for hire, Vos inhabits her subject’s bodies, against their will, committing the murders through them, before forcing said subjects to end their own lives in a perfect crime scenario.

An incredibly confident and fully-realized film, Possessor finds Cronenberg fully in control and unafraid of shocking his audience as his dark and deadly tale builds with the momentum of a freight train screaming through a railyard late at night. His leads have never been better either, starting with Riseborough, who was so vulnerable and ethereal in Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy, here she’s a terrifying persona non grata psychopath being sucked into the abyss. And as her prey, Chrisopher Abbott is alternately utterly sympathetic and wholly sinister when his actions are manipulated by Vos for the most wicked and homicidal of purposes.

Utilizing stylish yet often austere cinematography from Karim Hussain, as well as gifted production design from Rupert Lazarus, along with a bevvy of suitably brutal and bloody practical effects, Possessor is an uneasy but nonetheless awesome experience.

Now that the sun has finally set on 2020, the year that wouldn’t end, Taste of Cinema offers up our favorites from the exciting and upsetting year that was. To anyone of the opinion that 2020 was a mediocre year for movies, you just weren’t looking hard enough. But you’d also be forgiven as, owing to the global pandemic, this was a challenging year for moviegoers and moviemakers alike.

That said however, we do admit that the films that of the films that did see release, even just narrowing those titles down to a workable 20 titles for this list was no small feat – I cringe at the many worthy films that didn’t make the cut or that we weren’t able to screen in our region (and be sure to look at the Honourable Mentions section for more list-worthy titles).

The films in this list show a wide-ranging assortment including auteur-driven films, populist fare, plentiful arthouse gems, genre films, and many magnificent female-led projects, too (five of the top ten films are from women directors; a refreshing and restorative sign of the more inclusive times we’re living in).

One more quick note, the films that follow do NOT include any documentaries (that’s a separate list), though if it did you can bet that Caught in the Net, Dick Johnson is Dead, Into the Storm, My Mexican Bretzel, and Time would be amongst those roundly represented.
And now, without further ado, let the roundup commence!

20. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

He may not be as prolific as his fans would like, but writer-director Charlie Kaufman came back in 2020 in a big way, offering us another intensely surreal and densely layered film that promises, at least initially, to plumb the depths of the subconscious à la vintage David Lynch and then some. And despite some very Lynchian manoeuvres throughout, a single viewing doesn’t, for me at any rate, quite coalesce (I’m Thinking of Ending Things can be something of a hard sell as multiple viewings appear to be mandatory).

Admittedly I didn’t connect emotionally the way that I had hoped with this alternately dazzling and confounding film. Still, while this film lacks the mastery of Synecdoche, New York, it’s still a memorable, moving and worthwhile film with much to admire and marvel at (Jessie Buckley, Toni Colette, Jesse Plemons and David Thewlis are fantastic).

Apart from some seemingly deliberate obfuscation, this film is still highly recommended and, off-kilter as it is, is frequently a beauty to behold.

19. Beans

Director Tracey Deer, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Meredith Vuchnich, presents a poignant, powerful, and very Canadian tale of recent history in Bean. What could have been, in lesser hands, a preachy history lesson is instead a deeply felt and firsthand tale set during the 78-day Oka crisis in Quebec during the summer of 1990.

Deer delivers more than a moving, maddening and personal story, but one rife with evocation and feeling while also showcasing the incredible talents of its young star, Kiawentiio as Tekehentahkhwa, a young Mohawk girl coming-of-age amidst agonizing social oppression and upheaval.

Perhaps the most important Canadian film of the last 10 years or so, Beans is a beautiful and distressing portrait of racism, injustice and family. Don’t miss it.

18. Host

Filmed in 2020 while under quarantine restrictions due to the pandemic, director Rob Savage, co-writing with Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd, take a bare-bones premise of a group of friends staying connected via a regular Zoom call and find new and all too relatable ways to bring the chills and upsets home while raising all of the alarms.

This low-budget/high-concept post-quarantine genre film is economic across the board, and simultaneously it’s incredibly effective in more ways than one. How far is this movie going to go? How safe is anyone? As Host barrels along, the scares and stakes escalate and evolve and never feel less than genuine as well as inescapable.

The cast of largely unknowns are 100% believable and the truncated running time (barely an hour) makes the mad rush of panic all the more palpable.

Host is definitely the one horror film of 2020 not to miss, and if there’s any justice in the world it will be remembered come awards season.

17. Violation

Easily the most audacious genre film I saw at VIFF 2020, writer-director duo Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli make a debut feature that’s hard to look at but even harder to look away from. Violation is that too rare a feminist rape-revenge film that actually IS feminist. It’s not just posturing and exploitation (the only nudity here is that of the rapist, and the crime itself is shot with surreal ferocity in a powerful but not at all gratuitous manner).

Over the course of a brief and already uncomfortable reunion with her sister, Greta (Anna Maguire), Miriam (Sims-Fewer) is drugged and assaulted by Dylan, her brother-in-law (Jesse LaVercombe).

As Miriam makes her play to out her assailant and the hypocrisy and ignorance in her midst the fittingly shaky and drunken lensing of cinematographer Adam Crosby, brilliantly paired with Andrea Boccadoro’s moodily effective score, and the bold and brash narrative leaps of the stirring screenplay all mount up to mental anguish and horrific mastery. Make no mistake, Violation is a disturbing, gutsy, tough, and rewarding experience that you’ll crawl away from and, as you recover from it, you’ll be both overwhelmed and ultimately, very moved. Hopefully it will see some kind of wide release in 2021.

16. Bad Tales

An artful yet absolutely gritty suburban noir from the D’Innocenzo Brothers (Boys Cry), the consistently allusive Bad Tales is eccentric, admirably madcap, and utterly heartbreaking.

These hyperlinked yarns, set in the suburbs of Rome over the course of one memorably miserable summer, feature incorrigible adults and the maltreated children in their charge and while the cruelties and distrust on display make aspects of the film somewhat challenging (how much abuse can these poor kids endure?), they are never less than fascinating and feature a wealth of convincing child actors and a shrewdly observed screenplay (which deservedly won the Silver Bear in Berlin earlier this year).

15. Mangrove

Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) kicked off his five-part thematically tied Amazon/BBC anthology series about the Black British experiences spanning the 1960s to the 1980s with this intimate yet absolutely monumental tale of activism and resistance set in 1968 Notting Hill.

Shaun Parkes is electric as Frank Crichlow, a Trinidadian entrepreneur named Frank Crichlow, whose new restaurant, the titular Mangrove, is about to become both a nexus for the local West Indian community but also the consistent target for raid after raid of a racist police force set on bullying and intimidating Black-owned businesses and their diverse clientele.

McQueen and his brilliant cinematographer Shabier Kirchner present fluid, fresh, and tactile imagery that celebrates the joy of these characters one minute with the painful and disruptive ache and urgency of unlawful raids and heart-swelling protests the next.

Mangrove is an enlightening, empowering, intelligent and awesome experience.

14. The Vast of Night

The Vast of Night marks the astonishing directorial debut of Andrew Patterson, who illustrates again and again what a confident, resourceful, and exciting storyteller he is. Presented as an uncanny and unsettling episode of “Paradox Theater”– a fictional anthology show in the vein of the Outer Limits and the Twilight Zone — The Vast of Night is set in 1950s New Mexico, in the town of Cayuga. Teenybopper Fay (Sierra McCormick) is a switchboard operator who’s overjoyed with her new tape recorder and enjoys cracking wise and chattering endlessly with fellow teen and radio DJ, Everett (Jake Horowitz).

The pair share some suspicions about science and the future and at first it feels like they might embark on a Nancy Drew-like mystery before it becomes more apparent that the pair are more aligned with the likes of Special Agents Mulder and Scully when they intercept a signal that might have extraterrestrial origins.

Patterson’s knack for building intrigue and mounting suspense as we edge closer to revelation is part of what makes the Vast of Night such an audacious and ominous tale. The tease of anticipation is almost more thrilling than the great unveiling. This compelling, technically flashy, and frequently funny sci-fi excitation feels fresh and, as the title suggests, very vast indeed.

13. Twilight’s Kiss

Proving again and again throughout Twilight’s Kiss to be a melacholic poet of the highest order, writer-director Ray Yeung (Front Cover) presents a stirring queer romance between two seniors; a taxi driver named Pak (Tai Bo, excellent) and recently divorced Hoi (Ben Yuen). An aching tale of acceptance and experience, this is a fascinating film flush with delicate observational beauty and charm.

12. Lapsis

One of the most sheerly enjoyable films from 2020, writer-director Noah Hutton’s Lapsis is a dazzling and inconspicuous amalgam of science fiction, social commentary and dark comedy that contains a multitude of tiny and refined pleasures.

Ray (Dean Imperial) lives in a familiar near-future where the gig economy is the best bet for most Americans, as the gap between the rich and the poor widens.

A cautionary tale with some hilarious and even harrowing conclusions, Lapsis is the best kind of quirky New Age nightmare. It’s a consistently smart and unsettling dystopian prevarication that pretty much has it all; reasonably high stakes, a likeable lead, amusing and observant dialogue, a splash of potential romance for our hangdog hero, cute robots, and a strange but conceivable conspiracy at the center of it all.

Realizing the game is rigged, Ray plays it anyway with what he hopes to be an ace up his sleeve. “That’s what you get Beeftech, you goddamn asshole,” shouts an antagonistic competitor, before adding a last slight of “LOSER!” while he trudges away into the bush. Lapsis may be a modest film but it’s also masterly.

11. Falling

Acrimony, humor, and pathos populate Falling, a gracefully drawn family drama from writer-director and co-star Viggo Mortensen (in his feature length directorial debut). In fittingly fine form and displaying a remarkably perceptive job, this is a film of raw intensity that will no doubt be difficult for some viewers, like myself, as it hits again and again uncomfortably close to home.

Dealing with dementia, bigotry, altruism and unconditional love in ways that show a raw authenticity, Falling also excels with a cast that is uniformly strong, particularly Lance Henriksen (give the man an Oscar already, Academy!). Mortensen repeatedly shows mastery in a narrative that becomes deceptively quite complex and the ending, exquisitely controlled, is a subtle sting that will move all but the most jaded.

Wow. Well, now that 2020 is finally in the rear view it’s safe to say that, as challenging and worrisome as the year was, it was an exceptionally strong year for genre films.

The following list of 20 horror titles rates and ranks what have been Taste of Cinema’s favorites for the year, but it’s worth pointing out that several anticipated fright films (Michael Chaves’s The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Scott Cooper’s Antlers, Nia DaCosta’s Candyman, Rose Glass’s Saint Maud, John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place: Part II, and James Wan’s Malignant, amongst them) never got their promised release dates, owing to the pandemic, but hopefully will see some kind of safe release in ‘21

A few shoutouts also deserve going out to some excellent genre films that didn’t make this list but are still mentioned in the “Honorable Mention” section, all of which are worth a watch for horror junkies.

And now, without further ado, here are our fave fright flicks of 2020, and be sure to join the conversation in the comments section below (be nice!). Enjoy.

20. The Lodge

This American-British horror film from writers-directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala had genre fans pumping their fists in anticipation thanks to their previously well-played full-on psychological freakout from 2014, Goodnight Mommy. And if you’re a fan of deep dark terror of the slow-burning variety, The Lodge does not disappoint.

Catalyzed by grief and the ghost of suicide, this twisted tale focuses on two siblings, Aidan (Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh) who are still reeling from the loss of their mother when their father (Richard Armitage) too swiftly pulls them into a new relationship with his new bride-to-be, Grace (Riley Keough, excellent).

Brace yourself for an unsettling stay in the titular abode as Grace and her stepchildren have it out in the most macabre of ways as the biggest and baddest disturbances and reveals are saved for the bitter end.

19. Scare Me

A delightfully droll horror anthology (of sorts) that had us grinning and guessing from the get go. This low-budget but highly creative indie earns bonus points for Aya Cash (The Boys) and costar Josh Ruben (who also wrote and directed) wringing laughs, derision and some very choice scares throughout.

During a power outage in a remote cabin in the Catskills, two recently acquainted neighbours, Fred (Ruben) and Fanny (Cash), who are also rival writers of horror fiction, have an opportunity to share their most unsettling tales with one another. What ever could go terrifyingly wrong?

Whatever Ruben does next we’ll be right there, as Scare Me so satisfyingly displays, he does the genre a lot of ingenuity.

18. The Bloodhound

Unsettling and strange, the Bloodhound is a cerebral chamber horror film that riffs on Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” while slyly entertaining and provoking a patient audience in writer-director Patrick Picard’s ferocious feature debut.

Francis (Liam Aiken) visits his one time very close pal, Jean Paul Luret (Joe Adler) in his luxurious but forbidding mid-century home, after an alarming but aloof plea for help. What unfolds involves JP’s tormented twin sister Vivian (Annalise Basso), a crawling apparition, and more over the film’s scant but effectively utilized 72 minutes.

Picard composes many lovely and unnerving visuals compositions (cinematographer Jake Magee is also one to keep an eye on), with a highly effective production design from Arielle Ness-Cohn, suggesting that this eerie introduction is one full of promise and menace.

17. Alone

Horror is truly the director’s genre (which is to say true suspense horror like Hitchcock and De Palma, not tedious torture porn and simple jump scares), and for proof of that look no further than John Hyam’s latest, the excellent, upsetting and artful small scale survival thriller freakout, Alone.

With any luck this will be Hyam’s breakthrough film as he continues to show so much promise and poise in the director’s chair (check out 2012’s Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning should you doubt his directorial chops).

Alone is definitely bolstered by remarkable performances from leads Jules Wilcox and Marc Menchaca (you thought he was creepy in HBO’s The Outsider, well wait until you get a load of him here!) as Jessica (Wilcox), a recent widow dealing with grief amidst a small cross-country trek, is kidnapped by a cruel, cold-blooded killer (Menchaca) who won’t give up the chase.

As far as the cat-and-mouse game goes, all the players here make Alone an outstanding, even breathtaking, feat. Not at all for the squeamish, Alone is a rewarding but deeply troubling cut of bucolic terror.

16. Come True

Writer-director Anthony Scott Burns serves up some imaginative ghostly imagery, a weirdly effective washed-out look, and another in a string of strong performances from Julia Sarah Stone (The Unseen, Weirdos) to elevate this “sleep study from hell” supernatural sci-fi shocker, Come True.

Genre fans will no doubt detect shades of Brian De Palma’s the Fury, John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness and Wes Craven’s Elm Street films when Come True is working (which is most of the time), with citations to rehashed X-men films and lesser Elm Street slashers when it’s not (there are definitely some predictable situations and outcomes that don’t do anyone any favors). So yes, while many of the tropes here have been done many times before, there’s still more than a few fascinating new wrinkles to this psychic-teen-in-distress thriller and a satisfying finish that make it worth a solid recommendation and something of a genre standout for the year.

Sooner or later Stone will get the breakout role she deserves and that will certainly send fans back to this film where they will not be disappointed. You read it here first.

15. His House

Much has been made of director Remi Weekes’s feature length debut concerning a young refugee couple (Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, both excellent) who’ve barely, and not unscathed, escaped the horrors of the war-ravaged South Sudan (their daughter perishes during the hard journey), for a new life in the UK.

What follows is a well executed and rather chilling haunted house thriller with a suiting socio-political commentary weaved into the narrative (the screenplay comes from Weekes, Felicity Evans and Toby Venables), making it as urgent and up-to-the-minute as it is tried-and-true for fans of sweeping, gothic horror.

Our only real issues here are with the small disappointments that such a smart horror film as this still relies so heavily on the trite and too predictable jump scare (this trend needs to die) when there’s more than enough eerie upsets and intrigue to overshadow such manipulative gimmickry.

Otherwise His House gets a strong recommendation and is one of the year’s more notable and effective genre films.

14. The Mortuary Collection

Writer-director Ryan Spindell’s latest creation, The Mortuary Collection, is that too rare a genre treat: a horror anthology that is consistently creepy, creative and most importantly for this kind of movie, it’s also a shit ton of fun.

In fact, in all these sordid little tales, framed around a young woman, Sam (Caitlin Custer) being interviewed for a position at a local mortician’s office that evolves into a series of scary stories being shared with pep and panic, there ain’t a stinker in the bunch. The tales, each displaying layered and lush production design, gruesome practical effects, and suitably ironic and ruthless narrative twists, are as memorable as they are macabre.

An extra fist-pump goes out for the scenery-chewin’ Clancy Brown, who easily gives the Cryptkeeper a run for his menacing monster-hosting money. For fright fans, The Mortuary Collection will easily stand shoulder-to-shoulder with similar omnibus terror tales like Creepshow (1982) and Trick ‘r Treat (2007), and like those genre mainstays, this one comes highly recommended. Satisfaction guaranteed!

13. Color Out of Space

If you want to see Nic Cage go full freak, Richard Stanley’s Color Out of Space delivers the goods. If you’re coming around the other side of things as an H.P. Lovecraft fan (for our money, his 1927 short story that inspired this film is the most terrifying thing he ever wrote) you won’t find this to be the most faithful of adaptations. But you will find that Stanley taps the weird fiction vein and cosmic terror nerve better than most who’ve approached Lovecraft’s work, and you probably won’t mind the liberties taken with the material.

Nathan (Cage) and Theresa Gardner (Joely Richardson) are a happily married couple in rural America with three kids and a farm where they raise alpacas and grow juicy tomatoes. Their ridiculously precious domestic bubble is about to burst most brutally when a glowing meteorite lands on their front lawn. Their bliss blooms to a kaleidoscopic nightmare in no time flat as space madness consumes the family in viciously personalized ways (even the alpacas aren’t spared the cosmic lash), and of course Cage goes Force 10 shitstorm.

It’s nice to see Stanley confidently calling action again after a lengthy absence (his output was famously stymied after the Island of Dr. Moreau fiasco in 1996, with his scant work since then being inconsistent and substandard), but given Cage’s Nic Cage-iness, one wonders if he took much direction at all. His reactions, or rather, his overreactions, never seem to match the matters at hand. But space mania will do that to you so here he gets a solid pass.

12. Zombi Child

Provocative French filmmaker Bertrand Bonello (Nocturama) resurrects the dead, or rather the undead, for this slow-burning but deeply rewarding exploration of colonialism, slavery, and voodoo mythology, with a little teen angst added for extra zip.

A much more literate horror film than most, Bonello, ever the iconoclast, here channels Jacques Tourner, weaving an intricate, naturalistic tale that also pays tribute to such diverse genre benchmarks as Victor Halperin’s White Zombie and Wes Craven’s The Serpent and the Rainbow.

Bouncing around from Haiti in 1962 to Paris in the present day, Zombi Child’s main thrust is with Melissa (Wislanda Louimat), a Haitian teenager at a prestigious all-girls boarding school who harbors a family secret that her new clique of friends are keen to unriddle.

Carefully combining an outsider perspective of awesome beauty and the corporeal existence of voodoo, Zombi Child not only permeates the present, but the past as well.

11. She Dies Tomorrow

Alternately jarring and subdued, writer-director Amy Seimetz (Sun Don’t Shine) weaves a nuanced tale of haunting, emotional anguish in her latest film, She Dies Tomorrow. To watch this movie today, in the midst of the pandemic — and particularly if you’ve ever read Ray Bradbury’s 1951 short story “The Last Night of the World”, which must have been at least a thematic influence — makes the dread and fatalist certainty of Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) all the more palpable and distressing.

Like Rob Savage’s Host (which you’ll find further down this very list), Seimetz’s film is instantly identifiable as part of society’s present ambience of uncertainty, insanity and existential panic owing to civil and mental turmoil. Both horror films drive in different directions but share a rattling unrest

In Seimetz’s psychodrama a circle of friends quickly come to recognize that Amy’s odd surety that death is quickly approaching becomes something every bit as infectious as the novel coronavirus. The apprehension, anxiety and paranoia these characters stare down becomes a frighteningly believable contagion.

Halloween is almost upon us, and for myself and many other genre fans, this time of year includes marathons of horror movies new and old; from guilty pleasure favorites, creepy cult classics, new fright films that have been generating agreeable buzz, and it’s always fun to not only discover new movies, but to turn friends and family members unto new discoveries as well. It’s with a little of that benevolent of an idea in mind, along with an affinity for newly unlocked originality and the concept of cool that this Halloween appropriate list came together.

The films listed here, and the numerous ones referenced throughout and in the “Honorable Mentions” section below comprise some really glittery and ghoulish gems of the genre. These are films made by visionary filmmakers who have artfully constructed horrors that are incredibly stylish and visually impressive. Enjoy!

10. Suspiria (2018)

An unsettling and artfully transgressive tribute to the classic giallo, only with a much needed feminist slant, Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria isn’t the colorful Daario Argento homage many expected. Sure, it’s a metafictional elucidation of sorts, and there are flashes here and there of Argento’s transfixing original, but in the hands of I Am Love (2009) and Call Me By Your Name (2017) director Guadagnino, the fractured, lacerated and luridly suggestive imagery – including the ecstatic and delirious use of dance – gets into your capitulum in ways Argento never envisaged. This is an altogether different beast, but at the same time it extraordinarily compliments the original.

Dakota Johnson is mesmeric as the young and hexed American dancer Susie Bannon, transposed to 1970s punk-era Berlin to audition for the world-famous Helena Markos Dance Company.

Drubbed by Gothic downpours, the academy is quick to embrace Susie, who is quickly placed as the new lead dancer after lead choreographer Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton) takes a shine to her. But for what sinister purpose? And why did the now missing student Patricia Hingle (Chloe Grace Moretz) cryptically divulge to her psychotherapist, Josef Klemperer (Swinton, again), her bent belief that the school is run by a coven of witches?

Bloodcurdling and cryptic, Suspiria moves with the assured grace of a 24-carat dance picture that gradually contorts into something ferociously gruesome and altogether unexpected.

A fever dream of matriarchal madness, the occult, doomed love, and dark secrets, Suspiria is a highly baroque, and poetic study of corruption, disturbance, motherhood, national guilt, savagery and so much more.

9. The Love Witch (2016)

Anna Biller’s delightfully macabre exercise in sassy seduction and strange, vintage sensations feels like it was made in another era but adorned with bracingly modernistic designs. The Love Witch is stunning to see and thrilling to think about as it throws back to the Technicolor melodramas of the swinging 60s and the sexploitation cinema that supervened. Starring a smashing Samantha Robinson, who looks like she stepped out of the Golden Age of Hollywood, is note-perfect as Elaine, the eponymous witch.

Beautiful but bloodthirsty, Elaine is determined to find the man of her dreams and will cast spells and brew strange potions to manipulate the men around her until she finds her ideal muse, even if her mental health is in constant question.

Biller’s inspired and kaleidoscopic set design, sumptuous costumes, and deliberately superannuated aesthetic is a crafty coup de cinema, combined with an excellently effective soundtrack that makes The Love Witch a ravishing, ineffable and incredibly cool entertainment.

8. Let the Right One In (2008)

With a startling arthouse sensibility and refreshingly sophisticated emotional depth, Tomas Alfredson’s Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In has already become an enduring classic and a high water mark in the overflooded vampire milieu. Adapted by John Ajvide Lindqvist and based off his excellent 2004 novel of the same name, this film is a brilliant merger of romance, horror, coming-of-age comedy, and slow-stirring tragedy.

Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) and Eli (Lina Leandersson) are both luminous as two lost and lonely kids – one a vampire, one a weirdo, both outcasts – who, for a time, need one another, and need to make sense of the world. Austerely elegant visuals, inventive and endearing re-imaginings of familiar vampire tropes, and pensive yet persuasive symbolism and spectacle, this is modern horror done to perfection. Its lackadaisical pacing works like a charm in creating a world for the viewer to get utterly engrossed in, ensuring that Let the Right One In is felt in the gut as it strangely and profoundly stirs the heart.

7. Don’t Look Now (1973)

A troubling, stunning, and sensual masterpiece, Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now is an elegant tragedy, a chic waking nightmare, and may also offer cinema’s best use of the color red.

Following the tragic death by drowning of their daughter, broken, grieving, and shattered parents John (Donald Sutherland) and Laura (Julie Christie) seek sanctuary and healing in the visually labyrinthine city of Venice. But even in so lovely a locale they cannot escape the feeling of menace, impending doom, and inescapable death.

Roeg’s signature visual style, a perfect fit for the Daphne du Maurier source material (Don’t Look Now is adapted from her shocking and celebrated 1971 short story) a fragmented, haunting, and cryptic combination of abrupt cuts, and jolting juxtapositions, jumps into overdrive. Venice transforms into a watery city of ghosts, populated by apparitions, decaying churches and meandering canals. Themes of death, loss, intrigue, and eroticism hound John and Laura as nostalgia and intangible terror plague their every step.

Few films are this powerful, this dismaying, and, ultimately, this tormenting, all while being a sensory experience in crumbling grace and terrible loss. Don’t Look Now is so stunningly sensuous that it makes it impossible to turn away.

6. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

German cinema in the 1920s was strongly bonded with the Expressionist art movement and focussed on the fantastic and the bizarre, and no other film exemplified this as much as Robert Wiene’s stirring, strange, and radically stylized innovation, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

One of the first films in history to be considered a work of art, this revolutionary silent horror masterwork tells the story of the crazed hypnotist Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) and his hypnotized lackey, the somnambulist Cesare (Conrad Veidt), regularly used to murder those Caligari deems unfit for life.

Part of Wiene’s strange cinematic technique includes curious narrative leaps such as flashbacks-within-flashbacks, an often imitated twist ending, abrupt close-ups that incite shock, and half-baked yet highly effective distorted sets that express unease and insecurity.

A vanguard to what would later be dubbed arthouse cinema, Roger Ebert famously proclaimed The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to be “the first true horror film”, and now, a century old, it’s still an effective shocker with an earned legendary legacy as well as honing a very specific and vintage idea of chilling cinematic cool.

Depending who you ask the 1990s was a rather lacklustre decade for horror. I’m more of the opinion that, following the horror renaissance of the 80s, it may have been a less impactful time for genre enthusiasts for a little while, but it would also see a resurgence in the slasher subgenre (thanks to Wes Craven’s Scream franchise) as well as found footage frights (The Blair Witch Project would leave a lasting impression and influence), and of course the trends of teen exploitation chillers, Stephen King adaptations and high concept arthouse horrors would also continue to carve out their own niches on the crowded horror field.

The list that follows looks at some 90s fright films that have proven to entice audiences, in most instances audiences that eluded them upon initial release, or were sleepers then, only to be reassessed and reappraised in the time since. Either way, these are largely a collection of rewarding, under-the-radar gems that are sure to fire the imagination and fuel a nightmare or two. Enjoy!

10. Cube (1997)

Like a Twilight Zone episode dreamed up by the likes Jorge Luis Borges, Canadian filmmaker Vincenzo Natali (Splice) made an auspicious feature-length directorial debut with this psychological thriller/horror/sci-fi pastiche, the ultimate in high-concept and low-budget mind messing.

A small group of strangers (including Nicole de Boer and Julian Richings) awaken in an elaborate prison maze of joining cubic cells that seem to go on to infinity, each with no memory of how they arrived in such strange perplexity. As they traverse the cube they soon find that each cell is booby-trapped, the meaning behind their impasse is scrutinized intelligently, and the allegorical and metaphysical payoff is as satiating as it is fist-pumping.

9. Lord of Illusions (1995)

Unless you’re a Clive Barker superfan you’d be easily forgiven for forgetting all about this supernatural film noir creepfest, which was barely a blip at the box office before reappearing with little fanfare in video stores. And it’s a shame so few people turned out for this occult-addled mystery featuring Scott Bakula’s New York City gumshoe Harry D’Amour, as Lord of Illusions was primed to be the first in a pulp detective horror franchise that Barker was aching to unleash.

Dorothea (Famke Janssen) is the wife of the renowned and eponymous illusionist Phillip Swann (Kevin J. O’Connor), who has become the vengeful focus of a ticked off and treacherous cult, and she’s hired D’Amour in hopes he can protect her husband from these maniacs and in particular, their dangerous leader, William Nix (Daniel von Bargen).

While Nix may not have the visual menace of Pinhead or the engaging origin story of Candyman, he’s still one of Barker’s most chilling and charming villains, and for better or worse, perhaps his most conventional. Watching him throw down against the world-weary D’Amour is a spooky and satisfying saga, highlighted by strong visual effects and fine performances, Lord of Illusions is smoke and mirrors worth engaging in.

8. Ravenous (1999)

Antonia Bird’s gruesome black comedy/horror-suspense movie messes around with the mystery around both the Donner Party and Alfred Packer tragedies in this decidedly strange tale of cannibalism and survival in 1840s California. The creep factor is considerably upped by the Damon Albarn/Michael Nyman score, cinematographer Anthony B. Richmond’s lensing, Bird’s solid direction, and some whacked out performances from the strong cast, Robert Carlyle and David Arquette chiefly amongst them.

Captain John Boyd (Guy Pearce) is sent to investigate strange reports of missing men, women, and children at a remote Army outpost, Fort Spencer, on the Western frontier. It’s not long before Boyd and his regiment find wounded frontiersman F.W. Colquhoun (Carlyle), whose horrible report of a wagon train tragedy and a rogue Army colonel lead Boyd and his boys into the evil unknown.

Ravenous originally received a tepid and lukewarm response from audiences and critics, though Roger Ebert rightly detailed it as “the kind of movie where you savor the texture of the filmmaking, even when the story strays into shapeless gore.” Now, in hindsight and rediscovered by adventurous audiences, Bird’s Ravenous is better appreciated for its skewering of Western tropes, razor-sharp satirical tact, vivid horror elements, and silly-strange intensity.

7. Cemetery Man (1994)

This existential zombie comedy from Michele Soavi, based off of Italian comic book author/novelist Tizian Scalavi’s 1991 novel “Dellamorte Dellamore”, is probably the best zombie populated, satirical, necrophilia-addled rom com you’ve never seen.

Rupert Everett is our put-upon hero Francesco, who works at a cemetery alongside his simpleton sidekick, Gnaghi (a perfectly cast François Hadji-Lazaro), just outside the sleepy Italian village of Buffalora. By day Francesco and Gnaghi busy themselves maintaining the cemetery so that the grieving can mourn their loved ones and find some semblance of peace amongst the manicured lawns, hedgerows and well-looked after tombstones and crypts. By night it’s a whole other story as Francesco and Gnaghi must battle said loved ones, who rise like clockwork the night of their burial as a shambling, shrieking zombie.

Fans of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films will appreciate the pitch-black humor of Cemetery Man, a film that jumps genres in a wink and a blink. A madcap zombie movie one minute, a sexy/silly romantic comedy the next. The end result is a delightfully weird and devilish detour that also features my favorite horse reaction shot to a terrible traffic collision that you’re likely to ever see.

6. Poison (1991)

Todd Haynes rushed onto the stage as a New Queer Cinema trailblazer in the dizzying debut, Poison. This audacious, confrontational, and uncompromising portmanteau triptych takes on three wholly different genres (faux documentary, gay prison romance, and 1950s sci-fi horror B-movie), drawing perhaps most notably from French iconoclast Genet’s lurid BDSM-addled poetic writings.

The common thread that sews these stories together rests in the dissection of traditional attitudes on homosexuality, and social panic, with results that move from subtle to extreme as familiar modes, methods, and archetypes get reworked and regenerated right before our eyes. Even today, nearly 30 years on, it’s rare to see such contrastingly delicate, lithe, and polemical designs in a single film. Poison is powerful stuff from a major American director. Don’t miss it.

Like a lot of kids, growing up in the 1980s with my kid brother, we spent a great deal of time watching wonderfully inappropriate horror films, mostly on pay TV, late night cable or with parental permission, renting them from the local video store. Peeking through fingers, knowing we shouldn’t be seeing what we were seeing but unable and often unwilling to turn away as our hearts jackhammered our spines, thrilled at the scary spectacle unraveling before us; sneering monsters with crimson claws and drooling fangs, certain to inspire nightmares and night lights.

These late nights would lead to a lifelong fascination with genre films, and so, with a whiff of nostalgia in the air and a devilish grin, recounted here are ten of the best overlooked fright films the 1980s have to offer, and, despite some lazy tropes, overkill of slasher franchises, and uneasy exploitation misfires, the horror film had a heyday of artistic and commercial successes that has been unrivaled since. Enjoy!

10. The Gate (1987)

This surprisingly effective slice of horror-lite, targeted at a young audience who could easily identify with the film’s twelve-year-old protagonist, Glenn (Stephen Dorff, in his feature film debut), is a creepy, funny, and refreshingly unjaded dark adventure. An American-Canadian co-production from director Tibor Takács and writer Michael Nankin, both of whom share an appreciation of Ray Harryhausen-style stop-motion, The Gate introduces us to Glenn, left in the care of his boy-obsessed 16-year-old sister Alexandra (Christa Denton), as their folks leave town for the weekend.

And while his big sis would much rather throw a party than pay her annoying little brother much attention, Glenn and his bff Terry (Louis Tripp), both heavy-metal enthusiasts, soon summon some dark shit from a hole left by a fallen tree in the backyard. A gateway to hell or just overly elaborate liner notes from their favorite aggressive LP, “The Dark Book”, played backwards, of course, just maybe? The Gate is first-rate horror-adjacent fare, and a perfect intro for moppets who are curious about monsters (it was certainly a “gateway” for me, to many more adult-framed fright flicks). A gem.

9. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

The boundary pushing body horror on shrill display in this cyberpunk fright flick is a large part of what made this low budget effort from cult-film director Shinya Tsukamoto a hit with the midnight movie crowd.

Shin’ya Tsukamoto is the metal fetishist gone mad –– perhaps due to the writhing maggots that pour from his wounds where metal melds to his disgusting skin –– who’s mowed down on the highway by Salaryman (Tomorrow Taguchi) and his girlfriend (Kei Fujiwara). These reckless lovers then dispose of his body by dumping it into a ravine. Little did they suspect this would provoke a decidedly nasty curse that transforms the flesh into iron in as many painful and vomitous ways as possible. Ain’t karma a bitch?

This strange, sometimes boring, sometimes fascinating, frequently gory, often funny, and always fucked up film would go on to father two just as transgressive sequels; Body Hammer (1992) and The Bullet Man (2009) while cinching Tsukamoto as an international provocateur of unconventional cult cinema. It’s also fair to say that this is a film for extreme fans but, that said, admirers of David Cronenberg (particularly 1983’s Videodrome) and David Lynch (shades of 1977’s Eraserhead) will dig and devour some of the surreal strangeness as well.

8. The Hidden (1987)

A precursor to his Special Agent Dale Cooper persona, Kyle MacLachlan stars as FBI agent Lloyd Gallagher in hot pursuit of an exotic car loving, nihilistic, and parasitic alien creature that moves from host to host leaving bullet-riddled bodies and swathes of destruction in its wake.

Director Jack Sholder, perhaps best known for 1985’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, is a fleet-footed filmmaker in this screaming, satisfying, and inflamed genre film, the perfect distillation of over-the-top action, alien sci-fi and messy horror.

Buttressed by a punk rock appreciation –– the Los Angeles locations add to this artful effect –– a driving, thumping rock score, and frequent exotic sports car chase scenes, and high fashion gun battles certainly influenced by Michael Mann’s then ubiquitous Miami Vice. The Hidden is an adrenalized actioner that seemed to materialize out of the ether, one that even Roger Ebert, sometimes too harsh on genre films, had to enthusiastically award a thumbs up, saying, “I don’t know what I was expecting, but certainly not this original and efficient thriller.”

7. Dead & Buried (1981)

Director Gary Sherman, who would go on to such memorable 80s films as Wanted: Dead or Alive (1986) and Poltergeist III (1988) managed to find a winning cult combo of EC Comics-style of dark horror fantasy with the exploitative aplomb of Herk Harvey’s 1962 indie horror Carnival of Souls, and the results are a somewhat unsung 80s slasher staple, Dead & Buried.

Buttressed by a decent cast (including Melody Anderson, Barry Corbin, James Farentino, and a pre-Freddy Krueger Robert Englund), excellent practical gore effects from Stan Winston, and a screenplay tweaked by the likes of writing team Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett of Alien fame.

Dead & Buried takes place in the picturesque coastal town of Potter’s Bluff, Rhode Island. A tourist trap that promises good fishing and the kind of eerie, in-your-face locals who just might brutally murder out-of-towners, only to have said out-of-towners resurface as model citizens. That the town-folk seem readily versed in voodoo, particularly the reanimation of the recently deceased, well that’s just par for the course. And Potters Bluff’s sheriff (Farentino) has had enough of this odd behaviour. If he has to shake down all the eccentric chuckleheads in his community to get at the heart of this building mystery, including the suspicious coroner-mortician, William G. Dobbs (Jack Albertson), well so be it.

Some small towns have big secrets, and sometimes they’re best left buried and undisturbed.

6. The Hitcher (1986)

As sadistic as it is deeply disturbing, Robert Harmon’s incredibly violent road thriller doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel. In fact, it’s largely a retelling of Steven Spielberg’s Duel with a bigger body count and more splatter, with the added advantage of Rutger Hauer as our unstoppable boogeyman, and the likes of a post-Ponyboy C. Thomas Howell and a budding Jennifer Jason Leigh as the bad guy’s quarry. If all the blood spray and viscera leaves a bad taste, it’s intentional.

Jim (Howell) is a youngster in need of a lucky break. Agreeing to deliver a car from Chicago to San Diego as a side hustle, Jim makes his first mistake when he stops for hitchhiker John Ryder (Hauer), a rough-around-the-edges sort who raises about a dozen red flags before he’s even sat in the shotgun seat. Ryder’s murderous intent is soon revealed but before Jim can jettison the killer in his midst a whole lot of nasty shit goes down.

The Hitcher is the type of movie where the killer is literally unstoppable, where the hero seems jinxed with making every bad decision, where the police are as useless as a dewclaw on a kitty cat, and where a righteous babe like Nash (Leigh) is destined for the most grisly death of all.

The Hitcher is a white-knuckle detour through a hell of filling stations, roadside diners, and future crime scene hotel rooms. The chase is on, and the finish line might well end in mutual annihilation of the innocent and guilty alike.

It’s not the end of 2020 yet, but as any genre fan can attest, we’ve already seen a wealth of outstanding horror films this year. The following list of 10 titles rates and ranks what have so far been Taste of Cinema’s favorites, but it’s worth pointing out that the months ahead will unleash several anticipated fright films (Aneesh Chagnaty’s Run, Michael Chaves’s The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Scott Cooper’s Antlers, Nia DaCosta’s Candyman, Rose Glass’s Saint Maud, and James Wan’s Malignant, amongst them) that are sure to be added to our year end horror roundup later on.

A few shoutouts also deserve going out to some excellent genre films that didn’t make this list but are still mentioned in the “Honorable Mention” section just below the following top 10, all of which are worth a watch for horror junkies.

And now, without further ado, here are the films, and be sure to join the conversation in the comments section below (be nice!). Enjoy.

10. The Invisible Man

Writer-director Leigh Whannel follows up 2018’s ultra-violent sci-fi sleeper Upgrade with a revisionist take on the H.G. Wells 1897 classic, “The Invisible Man”. Straight up, several aspects of this new iteration of the Invisible Man are flimsy and entirely predictable. The villain, who we both literally and figuratively see very little of isn’t that scary at all, and that’s gotta be why Elisabeth Moss is here; to overcompensate the plot’s many holes, and there are far too many convenient design flaws (and not just in the silly top secret invisible suit) before we even get to the ridiculously unstoppable evildoer trope, his neglected yet well-fed dog and eye-rolling/face-palming cheat in the third act.

But let’s face it, Whannel has a lot of ruthless fun as Cecilia (Moss) tries to convince the world at large that her abusive piece of human garbage ex (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) is after her beyond the grave because, you know, he staged his suicide so he can zip around in his invisible underoos.

Moss pulls you in, makes you care, makes you mad at the hand she’s been dealt, and definitely makes you marvel at many startling setpieces (or at least the one jailbreak scene that really is the movie’s topper) and, despite the smoke and mirrors, makes you curious if an Invisible Woman sequel might be in the cards because, hey, Cecilia deserves a better turn, and after two hours of this, so do we. But despite the snarkiness here, this damsel in distress detour is familiar fun, and for a mainstream movie, Whannel proves his mettle.

9. The Lodge

This American-British horror film from writers-directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala had genre fans pumping their fists in anticipation thanks to their previously well-played full-on psychological freakout from 2014, Goodnight Mommy. And if you’re a fan of deep dark terror of the slow-burning variety, The Lodge does not disappoint.

Catalyzed by grief and the ghost of suicide, this twisted tale focuses on two siblings, Aidan (Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh) who are still reeling from the loss of their mother when their father (Richard Armitage) too swiftly pulls them into a new relationship with his new bride-to-be, Grace (Riley Keough, excellent).

Brace yourself for an unsettling stay in the titular abode as Grace and her stepchildren have it out in the most macabre of ways as the biggest and baddest disturbances and reveals are saved for the brutal and bitter end.

8. The Mortuary Collection

Writer-director Ryan Spindell’s latest creation, The Mortuary Collection, is that too rare a genre treat: a horror anthology that is consistently creepy, creative and most importantly for this kind of movie, it’s also a shit ton of fun.

In fact, in all these sordid little tales, framed around a young woman, Sam (Caitlin Custer) being interviewed for a position at a local mortician’s office that evolves into a series of scary stories being shared with pep and panic, and there ain’t a stinker in the bunch. The tales, each displaying layered and lush production design, gruesome practical effects, and suitably ironic and ruthless narrative twists, are as memorable as they are macabre.

Bonus points for the scenery-chewin’ Clancy Brown, who easily gives the Cryptkeeper a run for his menacing monster-hosting money. For fright fans, The Mortuary Collection will easily stand shoulder-to-shoulder with similar omnibus terror tales like Creepshow (1982) and Trick ‘r Treat (2007), and like those genre mainstays, this one comes highly recommended.

7. Color Out of Space

If you want to see Nic Cage go full freak frenzy, Richard Stanley’s Color Out of Space delivers the goods. If you’re coming around the other side of things as an H.P. Lovecraft fan (and I must interject to say that his 1927 short story that inspired this film is the most terrifying thing he ever wrote) you won’t find this to be the most faithful of adaptations. But you will find that Stanley taps the weird fiction vein and cosmic terror nerve better than most who’ve approached Lovecraft’s work, and you probably won’t mind the liberties taken with the material.

Nathan (Cage) and Theresa Gardner (Joely Richardson) are a happily married couple in rural America with three kids and a farm where they raise alpacas and grow juicy tomatoes. Their ridiculously precious domestic bubble is about to burst most brutally when a glowing meteorite lands on their front lawn. Their bliss blooms to a kaleidoscopic nightmare in no time flat as space madness consumes the family in viciously personalized ways (even the alpacas aren’t spared the cosmic lash), and of course Cage goes Force 10 shitstorm.

It’s nice to see Stanley confidently calling action again after a lengthy absence (his output was famously stymied after the Island of Dr. Moreau fiasco in 1996, with his scant work since then being inconsistent and substandard), but given Cage’s Nic Cage-iness, one wonders if he took much direction at all. His reactions, or rather, his overreactions, never seem to match the matters at hand. But space mania will do that to you so here he gets a solid pass.

6. Zombi Child

Provocative French filmmaker Bertrand Bonello (Nocturama) resurrects the dead, or rather the undead, for this slow-burning but deeply rewarding exploration of colonialism, slavery, and voodoo mythology, with a little teen angst added for extra zip.

A much more literate horror film than most, Bonello, ever the iconoclast, here channels Jacques Tourner, weaving an intricate, naturalistic tale that also pays tribute to such diverse genre benchmarks as Victor Halperin’s White Zombie and Wes Craven’s The Serpent and the Rainbow.

Bouncing around from Haiti in 1962 to Paris in the present day, Zombi Child’s main thrust is with Melissa (Wislanda Louimat), a Haitian teenager at a prestigious all-girls boarding school who harbors a family secret that her new clique of friends are keen to unriddle.

Carefully combining an outsider perspective of awesome beauty and the corporeal existence of voodoo, Zombi Child not only permeates the present, but the past as well.

Now that the sun has set on the sensational 39th annual Vancouver International Film Festival (which ran from September 24th – October 7th, 2020), Taste of Cinema offers up our favorites from what was another exciting, and very impressive festival and being charged with the task of picking our 15 favorites was no easy affair.

The films on this list show a wide-ranging assortment including auteur-driven films, populist fare, arthouse, genre films, and some truly stunning documentaries as well.

And now the festival roundup and until next year VIFF, we’ll catch you in the queue!

15. Another Round

It’s great to see Thomas Vinterberg and Mads Mikkelsen in cahoots once again and they should definitely be doing so more often. And while Another Round doesn’t quite deliver the provocation of their last collaboration The Hunt (2012), this one still holds several bright, dazzling, and drunkenly funny moments.

Also nice to see is Vinterberg regular Thomas Bo Larsen as gym teacher Tommy, and for my money it was his character’s aging and arthritic doggo named Laban that warmed my cockles the most.

A fiercely funny and perilously sad picture, Another Round surprisingly doesn’t say or stammer anything that’s new, even though the slyly genius premise of a group of teachers challenging each other to stay half in the bag for an extended stretch to solve their life’s woes should be more revelatory then it is. And coming from Vinterberg, one who is so regularly associated with making provocations, I found that to be the film’s most sobering conceit. Still recommending this one rather enthusiastically but it could have been a far sight better.

14. Caught in the Net

This flawlessly executed and bravely realized documentary examining the revolting world of online sexual abuse is simultaneously engrossing and execrable.

13. Siberia

The prolific and provocative filmmaker Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant) cnce again reteams with his current mainstay and ready muse Willem Dafoe in Siberia, a surreal digression that feels like a subarctic delineation of James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” and is also perhaps just as polarizing.

As Ferrara’s allegorical and byzantine-like film unfolds, it becomes the kind of deep dive where it’s very easy to lose track of all the narrative threads and that may well be part of it’s elaborate duplicity. Dafoe’s many doppelgängers, brushes with sorcerers, lactating women and naked dwarves all depose such fascinations.

Is it pretentious? Absolutely. Is that a problem? For some, maybe, but not for this writer. Admittedly I could seldom make sense of what was happening on screen much of the time, but I didn’t let that dampen the enjoyment I felt splashing around in these strangely surreal waters with the consistently wonderful Dafoe and the odd assortment of dreamlike no-goodniks, alluring sirens and dangerous visions that suck him and us into the sly abyss. It’s a dark deathtrip and some kind of vivid and sequential coup d’etat.

12. Into the Storm

Beautifully shot and truly touching, this Peruvian surfing documentary from Adam Brown was filmed over 5 years and coincidentally it made me ugly cry about 5 times.

11. Last and First Men

Perhaps best known for his incredibly moving minimalist score for Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016), amongst others, Icelandic composer and filmmaker Jóhan Jóhannsson’s Last and First Men, released posthumously, makes for one haunting, honey of a post-apocalyptic parting gift.

Beautiful black-and-white imagery, filmed in stunning 16mm by cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen (Victoria), combined with fittingly chilly narration from Tilda Swinton, evoke the final gasps of a lost utopia in an entirely immersive and cerebral essay film. It’s a somber yet intricate sci-fi spectacle that lands somewhere between Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962) and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) — in fact, Arthur C. Clarke read Stapleton’s novel at a very impressionable age, inspiring not only his short story “The Sentinel” but the monoliths therein that would become the most iconic imagery in Kubrick’s adaptation and overall oeuvre.

This is a dreamy and dazzling final statement on ephemerality and extinction from a remarkable polymath artist we were only just getting to know. Highly recommended.

10. Beans

Director Tracey Deer, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Meredith Vuchnich, presents a poignant, powerful, and very Canadian tale of recent history in Bean. What could have been, in lesser hands, a preachy history lesson is instead a deeply felt and firsthand tale set during the 78-day Oka crisis from 1990.

Deer delivers more than a moving, maddening and personal story, but one rife with evocation and feeling while also showcasing the incredible talents of its young star, Kiawentiio as Tekehentahkhwa, a young Mohawk girl coming-of-age amidst agonizing social oppression and upheaval.

Perhaps the most important Canadian film of the last 10 years or so, Beans is a beautiful and distressing portrait of racism, injustice and family.

9. Twilight’s Kiss

Proving again and again throughout Twilight’s Kiss to be a melacholic poet of the highest order, writer-director Ray Yeung (Front Cover) presents a stirring queer romance between two seniors; a taxi driver named Pak (Tai Bo) and recently divorced Hoi (Ben Yuen). An aching tale of acceptance and experience, this is a fascinating film flush with delicate observational beauty and charm. Recommended.

Proving once again beyond any shadow of a doubt that he’s one of modern cinema’s most unpredictable, prolific and provocative of filmmakers, and perhaps one who’s also touched with an otherworldly grace, Abel Ferrara (Ms .45, Bad Lieutenant, Tommas) busies himself exorcising some strange cinematic demons while unleashing his own inner force in his new film, Siberia. Once more reteaming with his current mainstay and ready muse Willem Dafoe, this surreal digression feels like a subarctic delineation of James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” and is also perhaps just as polarizing.

Siberia finds our somewhat quixotic protagonist Clint (Dafoe) dutifully posted at an unruly bar in the titular Russian province. It’s the kind of place where demanding and rather volatile customers suddenly transform into snarling bears, spilling beer and carelessly carousing in a rather dangerous manner. As the denizens of Clint’s establishment pay him tribute it quickly becomes clear that we, the viewer, are privy to someplace far more celestial and hypnagogic than your typical tavern or gin joint.

As Ferrara’s allegorical and byzantine-like film unfolds, one he co-wrote with five time collaborator Christ Zois (New Rose Hotel, Welcome to New York), it becomes the kind of deep dive where it’s very easy to lose track of all the narrative threads and digressions, and that may well be part of Siberia’s elaborate duplicity. Clint’s many doppelgängers, brushes with sorcerers, lactating women and naked dwarves all depose such fascinations.

Is it pretentious? Absolutely. Is that a problem? For some, maybe, but not for this writer. Siberia is so in succession lovely and startling to look at (thanks in large part to the studious lensing of DP Stefano Falivene), as well as being often quite comical, frequently baffling, and with meanings so heavily obfuscated, it becomes an engaging and fascinating fantasy/nightmare that is also almost the quintessential festival film. VIFF audiences are certain to be divided directly down the middle, and I’ll bet Ferrara wouldn’t want it any other way.

Admittedly I could seldom make sense of what was happening on screen a large part of the time, but I didn’t let that dampen the enjoyment I felt splashing around in these strangely surreal waters with the consistently wonderful Dafoe and the odd assortment of dreamlike no-goodniks, alluring sirens and dangerous visions that suck him and us into the sly abyss. It’s a dark deathtrip, maybe, and some kind of vivid and sequential coup d’etat.

Taste of Cinema Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Author Bio: Shane Scott-Travis is a film critic, screenwriter, comic book author/illustrator and cineaste. Currently residing in Vancouver, Canada, Shane can often be found at the cinema, the dog park, or off in a corner someplace, paraphrasing Groucho Marx. Follow Shane on Twitter @ShaneScottravis.